“Opera has emerged as the big winner in the first round of Sustain funding from Arts Council England, the new cash pot set up to help cultural organisations combat the effects of the recession.” The largest award, £900,000 went to Welsh National Opera (which tours in England every year), with English National Opera receiving £750,000 and the Royal Opera House £700,000.
Tag: 07.31.09
Vietnam’s Fake Art
“Even the director of the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum here doesn’t know how many of the artworks and artifacts under his care are genuine and how many are extremely skillful copies. But he says he is going to try to find out.”
Musicians Want To Be Paid For Radio Play
“Hundreds of millions of dollars each year could be at play, so the debate over details of the bill has been fierce. But those battles pale in comparison to the PR methods used to fight for or against it. Adding a sense of urgency to the war is the fact that the two combatants — diskeries and radio stations — are megabucks operations suffering from plummeting returns. The bill has long been a dream of singers, musicians and record labels, but long opposed by broadcasters.”
Theatre Without The Words
“It’s a beguiling experience to watch something with all the verbal information removed – it makes you watch harder, for one. Instead of listening, you find yourself appreciating the costumes, the bodily gestures, the tone of the voice, the sets, the music – in short, everything except what is actually being said. And it’s remarkable how much that alone communicates.”
The Top Show On TV Thursday Nights? It’s Dance!
“So You Think You Can Dance” was judged the winner by Thursday primetime viewers ages 18-49, according to Nielsen preliminary nationals, enabling Fox to score a victory in the demo. CBS topped the night in overall viewers.
Rip Roarin’ Free Formin’ Radio
“Funded by listeners and staffed by unpaid DJs, New Jersey’s WFMU is the longest running freeform radio station in the US and quite possibly the only place in the world where you will hear a programme dedicated to Andrew Lloyd Webber songs in languages other than English.”
Hollywood Focuses On After The End Of The World
“A flood of post-apocalyptic stories is now headed toward movie theaters and TV screens. Previous waves of pop-culture disaster… have depicted calamity in stunning detail. Many of the new projects, however, actually skip the spectacle of doomsday. Instead, they’re more fixed on what goes down in the aftermath.”
Remembering Merce Cunningham
“Cunningham pioneered in the development of dance film, understanding the radical difference between the human eye and the camera lens, adapting his choreography for television while other artists still feared allowing their dances to be recorded. Some interesting pieces resulted from moving works originally made for film onto the stage.”
What’s Wrong With The New Music Biz Model?
“A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.”
Wanted: A Plan To Save Australian Books From The Rest Of The World
The Australian “government has refused to lock down a position on the contentious debate about lifting the ban on the importation of cheap overseas-produced books, but has said the priority is the viability of the Australian publishing industry.”